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Answer This: Van Jones

POLITICO caught up with former green jobs 'czar' Van Jones. |
John Shinkle/POLITICO
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What’s a common and accepted practice for Americans nowadays that you think we’ll look back on with regret?

Cellphones. Cancer in a box, I bet. You know how we look at old movies, and everyone is smoking, and we say: “Look at those idiots.” Twenty years from now, people will look at us mashing these cellphones against the sides of our skulls and say the same thing. But I still use mine 24/7!

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My cheekbones. They are just like my father’s. He died in 2008, and I miss him every day.

What would you attempt to do if you knew that you could not fail?

Create a science fantasy juggernaut like “Star Wars,” “Lord of the Rings” or “Harry Potter” — and try to bend the culture in a new direction.
What type of products do you never go cheap on, for the sake of quality?

Pens. When it is time to really think and really write — you must start with a blank piece of paper and a great pen.

Describe a few pet peeves of yours.

Cynics. People who are constantly focused on obstacles rather than opportunities. For Christ’s sake, move to another country! We are Ameri-CANS, not Ameri-CANTs. Anything is possible.

How often do you Google yourself?

I get all the alerts in a batch at the end of the day. All I can say is: There must be some other guy named Van Jones out there. And some right-wing bloggers have it in for that guy, something bad.
What do you know now that you wish someone had told you 10 years ago?

It might sound corny, but the mind, body, spirit, emotional health — it is all one system. You can’t perform well for long in one area unless you are attending to the others, too. Repressed issues become expressed issues, under pressure. If you want to play at the highest levels of this game, you gotta be learning how to love yourself more and more, how to take better care of yourself, all the way around. Respect the game, 360, and the game will respect you. Corny, but true.

However, we should expect further worsening on joblessness in the country in the next quarter because of political anxieties in the Middle East, check out an article called "High Speed University" for relation between a degree and job and the pay rate.

Good luck Mr. Jones you're going to need it the haters will dog you but you already know everything you need to know about and them your discription couldn't be more accurate. "No heart. No love. All calculation. All cynicism. How can anyone be so smug and superior about being so small?"

Aww, he seems sweet. Let's rehabilitate him. Isn't that the word they use? Hire him back. Obama still needs help with the job creation thing. He's been too busy to get to it yet. It's too hot to golf in DC, so he and Van can get busy now. Better hurry though, before more people wake up.

Good to catch up with Van Jones and see that he landed on his feet. Its even better to see that he is uncompromised fighting for all that he believes in. The racists on here label any independent, educated Black person or minority as an affirmative action case. Those that sink to that level of stupidity and knee-jerk racism will never go away. They have been with us through American history. In fact, America would not be America without them standing at the sidelines jeering, intimidating, stone-throwing, sicking dogs, spouting water hoses, shouting slurs, spitting, screaming and trying to bring Obama down. Roll with the punches, Van. These ignoramuses are here with us to stay. Keep on believing in America's ideals and trying to help us all to live up to them regardless of race or economic station. I -- and millions of other good Americans - will as well. At the end of the day, no matter what these morons say, if you do good and believe in good, good will always come to you. They tried to bring you down and they have failed and will continue to do so.

"In 1992, while still a law student at Yale, Jones participated as a volunteer legal monitor for a protest of the Rodney King verdict in San Francisco. He and many other participants in the protest were arrested. The district attorney later dropped the charges against Jones. The arrested protesters, including Jones, won a small legal settlement. Jones later said that "the incident deepened my disaffection with the system and accelerated my political radicalization."[18] In October 2005 Jones said he was "a rowdy nationalist"[15] before the King verdict was announced, but that by August of that year (1992) he was a communist"

He got involved with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), where Jones actively began protesting police brutality.[15] STORM was a socialist group whose official Points of Unity "upheld revolutionary democracy, revolutionary feminism, revolutionary internationalism, the central role of the working class, urban Marxism, and Third World Communism

After his White House appointment, Jones began receiving criticism from media sources such as WorldNetDaily and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, who featured Jones on fourteen episodes of his show.[38][39] They criticized Jones for his past political activities, including his involvement with STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement) and his support for Mumia Abu-Jamal, a prisoner sentenced to death for murdering a police officer

Several days later, Jones came under additional criticism for his name appearing on a 2004 petition from 911Truth.org that suggested the Bush Administration "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen

COMMUNIST. Pure and simple. Please quit doing puff pieces on these people

Bring Van Jones back to finish the job he was hired for - creating new, well-paid jobs for all Americans. There was plenty of money in the Stimulus for creating green jobs but when Van Jones was chased out of office by that tea-bagging trailer-trash MORMON Glenn Beck, he left all that money unspent and all those jobs only partially created. Bring Van Jones back now to create jobs for ALL out of work, especially minorities, women and gay Americans who are suffering most.